


Half-four

by shaenie



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-23
Updated: 2004-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>ow, fucker, ow, oh my God, my head, what the fuck did I fucking do last night?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-four

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheldrake/profile)[**sheldrake**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sheldrake/), for the Slashy Valentine (the rest of which may be found [here](http://slashavalentine.homestead.com/valentine_menu.html), in case any of y'all haven't seen them yet, many of them were quite remarkable) challenge.

i. Half four, Saturday

  
Orlando woke up too hot, face buried in an uncomfortably damp pillowslip. "Ungh," he said, and reached up (there was the sticky sound of sweaty skin unpeeling itself from sweaty skin, which was unnaturally loud for some reason) to rub at his face. Wait, where were his hands? He fumbled, and was abruptly assaulted, a flurry of soft, damp whacks across the face. "Whatafu…?" he said twisting away, and the abrupt change of position set off an explosion just behind his eyes. "Argh!" He fell forward, directly into the fluttering path of the hands ( _whap whap whap_ ) that had been assaulting him, and the fingers tangled in his mohawk, jerking uncomfortably and setting off little aftershocks of screaming pain inside his head.

He managed to heave over onto his back, and oh God, his head was going to fucking fall off his shoulders, but when he tried to grab at it (with both hands, to keep it from cracking apart) the gentle flailing at his face resumed. He jerked ( _ow, fucker, ow, oh my God, my head, what the fuck did I fucking **do** last night?_ ) back, trying to get out of range, and realized that the hands pawing ineffectually at his face were, in fact, his own.

"Huh," he said thoughtfully, and now that he was aware that he was the owner of the offending limbs, it was fairly easy to get them to stop flailing at him. It was hard to think over the dully insistent throb of his skull disintegrating, but it occurred to him that he couldn't feel either of them.

Then, unfortunately, he could.

The harsh burn of pins-and-needles rushed up both arms like water up a pair of bendy straws. "Owwww!" he complained loudly, and then groaned at the echo that set up within the crumbling vaults of his cranium. He could vaguely remember his mum telling him to walk around on it, once, when he'd complained of his foot going to sleep, but he was certain (in a bleary, uncertain sort of way) that he couldn't walk on his hands right now, so instead he shook them vigorously ("Oh, oh, fuckfuckfuck me, ow, bloody fucking OW!") for a few seconds (all he could take), and then rolled over onto his belly to dangle them off the side of the bed, because it seemed like the blood would get into them faster that way, and the faster the blood got into them the faster they'd wake up, and stop feeling like he'd plunged his arms elbow-deep into a great pile of carnivorous, needle-toothed hedgehogs.

His head hurt somewhat less at this angle, so he lay there for a while even after his hands stopped twitching with returned sensation. Concentrating on taking slow, even breaths sort of helped, he discovered, so he did that for a while, too, and once the red throb of agony subsided a bit, he chanced opening his eyes. They were blurry and felt grainy, but seemed to work all right aside from that. He could see his hands -- they looked blotchy and like they were turning a bit purplish, which couldn't be good -- and the tan carpet of his bedroom floor (somewhat of a relief, since he hadn't been entirely certain where he was), and… wait a minute.

Whose thong was that?

He eyeballed the neon green undergarment warily for a minute, casting around mentally for some sort of explanation, but the night before was a disquieting expanse of nothing at all in his memory. No, wait! He remembered… something. Dancing? With Madonna? Wait, that couldn't be right. He frowned and used one purplish, blotchy hand to rub at his face. What the bloody fuck? He was _pouring_ sweat! Why the hell was it so bloody hot?

He sat up very, very slowly. His head felt oddly wobbly, like it wasn't connected correctly to the rest of him. Like his neck had turned to rubber during the course of night before (something he couldn't entirely discount, since so much of the night was mysteriously absent from his recollection), and he was now afflicted with some sort of debilitating neck-and-head deficiency. _Bobble-head,_ he thought, not entirely displeased with the notion, in spite of the fact that the bobbling of his head was actually quite painful. He could live on someone's dashboard. Maybe Dom's, because Dom listened to relatively decent music, was capable of carrying on a reasonably entertaining conversation, and was the sort of bloke that would treat his bobble-headed ornaments with dignity. Okay, probably not with dignity. Maybe someone with good taste in music and breasts, then. Because breasts were good. And would give him something to look at.

Although with his luck, he'd get stuck on Elijah's dashboard, and be forced to listen to rubbish and watch Elijah chain smoke.

God, it _had_ to be too early for this. He lowered himself carefully back down to the bed -- and he really ought to go check the bloody thermostat, and take a shower, and brush his teeth (what the fuck had died in his mouth?), but fuck that, it was too far -- and closed his eyes, rather hoping things would look different the next time he opened them.

  
ii. Around twenty minutes later, still Saturday

  
Orlando was in hell, clearly, because only in hell would a tinny, distorted version of The Stray Cat Strut be allowed to even exist, let alone assault a person's ear drums while that person was struggling to stay unconscious to avoid the worst hangover of his life. Definitely Hell, because he could also hear someone snoring softly beside him, and he had absolutely no idea who it was -- and it wasn't terribly promising was it, to wake up with the realization that you'd brought someone home, and have the first thing you found out about her be that she snored as loud as Elijah.

"Wake the fuck up," Orlando groaned, dragging his pillow to cover his head. "For the love of God, answer your phone." Why did The Stray Cat Strut sound like it was being performed on a banjo?

"It's not mine, fuck off, Orli!" Dom snarled, and shoved an elbow into Orlando's ribs.

Ow! Also… Dom? Huh?

The phone -- whomever's it was -- stopped warbling its tragically perverted corruption of what was actually a fairly decent song, emitted a single polite chirp, and fell silent.

He spent nearly a minute going over everything he remembered from the previous night. There was camping or something, wasn't there? He seemed to remember tents. Wait, that didn't make sense. Of course, neither did the bit where he was dancing with Madonna. It was no good, he couldn't tell if he was remembering actual events or random snippets of dreams.

Dom let out a soft snore, and Orlando levered himself upright (more or less) batting the comforter away from Dom's face so that Orlando could glower more effectively. Although it hardly mattered, as Dom seemed to be sound asleep again, and totally unconcerned with Orlando's ire. "Dom!" he hissed, and then groaned at the distressing reverberations ( _Dom-om-om-om-om-om-om!_ ) the noise set off inside his head. He narrowed his eyes at Dom, sleeping peacefully, sleeping the sleep of the drunken-senseless-idiot-who-was-probably-responsible-for-the-state-of-Orlando's-skull (and then there was the matter of the THONG, and that was just a genuinely disturbing thought), and he was pretty sure it was the absolute height of unfairness that he should be awake and feeling like utter shite while Dom slept peacefully (snoring very softly through his wide open mouth, with all the bedclothes wound around him so that he resembled nothing so much as a Dom-burrito) in Orlando's bed. "Wake up, you wanker!" he growled (but softly, because his head really did ache), and reached out with both hands, giving Dom a little shake.

  
"Don't be a twat, you're a fucking autumn, mate!" Dom yelped (piercing Orlando's skull in at least six different places), and sat bolt upright, his eyes wide open and rimmed with red. Then he fell slowly backward, eyes fluttering closed. Orlando's head was definitely going to split down the center like an overripe melon, and fuck if he was going to let Dom sleep through it. He nudged Dom again before he was completely horizontal, and watched -- half-dismayed and half-satisfied -- as Dom tipped slowly to one side, and gently, gracefully, slid right off the edge of the bed.

The thud of the Dom-burrito connecting with the floor was gratifying enough to drown out the throbbing in Orlando's head for several seconds.

Dom's muffled curses actually brought a grin to Orlando's lips. That would teach the wanker.

"What the fuck, Orli?" Dom demanded indignantly, and then mewled piteously. "God, my fucking head!"

"Yeah," Orlando agreed, cradling his own head in both hands. Dom's eyes appeared over the edge of the mattress, squinted nearly shut against the dim light filtered in through the thick curtains, brow painfully furrowed. "Mine, too. This is all your bloody fault."

"Mine?" Dom objected, letting his head fall forward against the mattress so that his voice was muffled. "Why mine? And why is it so hot in here?"

"Dunno," Orlando muttered -- that was really a very good question, one that Orlando intended to investigate just as soon as he thought he could stand up without dying -- and lowered himself carefully back into a horizontal position. And that was way better, especially now that he wasn't sharing the bed with Dom and a huge pile of covers, even if he was pretty sure he would never get the smell of sweat out of his mattress. He really hoped the sweaty spot he was occupying on the sheets was his own.

And hadn't they started out the night with at least two other hobbits?

Speaking of which…

"Is your thong on my floor?"

The bed shifted slightly as Dom raised his face up off the mattress, but Orlando couldn't be arsed to turn his head enough to look at Dom. He waited several seconds for either a heated denial or a sheepish confession. Instead, Dom said: "Do you know you're naked?"

 _Eh?_

  
iii. four o'clock, Saturday

  
It was pretty amazing how quickly one could get into a pair of track pants when one really applied oneself.

  
iv. five past four, Saturday

  
The thing that was really bugging him was the unpleasant possibility -- which hadn't actually entered Orlando's mind before Dom had pointed out that he was naked -- that it was _his_ thong.

He wasn't really a thong sort of bloke. There were your blokes who liked thongs, and your blokes that didn't, and Orlando simply fell under the sort that didn't.

But he couldn't _prove_ it wasn't his thong. Not that having had some kind of clothing on would have proved definitively that it didn't belong to him, but if he had been wearing pants, it likely would have never come up. And now Dom was giving him a look. Orlando was certain of it, even though he wasn't actually looking at Dom, who was still crouched down beside the bed, which meant that Orlando hadn't got to see yet if _Dom_ was wearing clothes. Not that Orlando wanted to see it, of course; he just wanted to know because it seemed like it was fairly pertinent to the situation at hand… whatever that was. But anyhow. Orlando could feel Dom giving him a look.

"Shut it," Orlando said, although Dom hadn't actually said anything.

"What's on your arm, Orli?"

With super human exertion, he managed to get his arm up level with his eyes (because moving his head was bad, and since both arms belonged to him again and were in full working order, it seemed a waste not to use them). "Phone number?" he wondered out loud, squinting at the numbers scrawled across his forearm. "You tell me. It looks like you wrote it."

Dom rose up slightly (with a wince that Orlando found distinctly enjoyable) to peer more closely at Orlando's arm. His chest was bare, but he still had the comforter bunched around his waist. So. It _could_ still be Dom's thong. It was possible. Not that Dom seemed like a thong kind of bloke, but it had to be someone's thong. "Not enough numbers," he declared.

"Just my luck," Orlando grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut against the pounding in his temples. Which only made it worse, so he opened them again. Which didn't help, either. It actually felt like his eyeballs were throbbing. He wondered if that was possible. "You're just the sort of twat to write half of some bird's number on my arm."

"Don't think it's a phone number at all," Dom managed, squinting so that his eyes were almost completely closed. "There's hyphens, but they're in the wrong places. What the hell did we do last night?" he groaned, and pulled himself up onto the bed. Orlando closed his eyes as the bed dipped and shifted alarmingly under Dom's weight, feeling distinctly seasick. He was starting to think the best plan might be to just go back to sleep until the worst of the hangover passed.

"Fucked if I know," he muttered. "I remember going with Billy and Lij to that place downtown and it's all a fucking blur after that." He started to shake his head, and then changed his mind abruptly. Everything between his ears felt like a bunch of wobbly machinery, like an old pocket watch his grandfather had given him once, in which all the gears were loose, with teeth that didn't quite catch. "Where are Billy and Lij, anyway?"

Dom didn't answer, but he let out something that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

Considering the state of his head (not to mention the truly repugnant taste in his mouth), Orlando couldn't imagine what on earth Dom could find even remotely funny. He peeled one eyelid back to glare at Dom, but then forgot to actually glare, because Dom was leaning over him, peering intently at his chest. "Wha…?" he said, uncomfortably aware of the fact that there was a half-naked Dom in his personal space (and grimly ignoring the helpful interior voice that gleefully reminded him that he'd been sleeping entirely naked in the same bed with Dom less than an hour before), and that he was close enough to see the shine of sweat on Dom's skin. Um.

"There once was an elf named Orli, whose fashion came off rather poorly," Dom said, and then leaned closer and cocked his head. "Lift up your arm, man." Dom was smiling, but his brows were drawn together like he was still hurting, and Orlando felt guilty for wanting Dom to feel as crappy as he did. A little. A very little. Dom's lower lip, Orlando noticed, had a small cut in it, lightly scabbed over. He didn't remember it from the day before. Had they got into a fight?

"What are you on about?" he asked, but he didn't resist when Dom grabbed the arm with the phone number scrawled across it (or whatever the hell it was) and lifted it up. Dom's palm was damp, and skimmed slickly up Orlando's forearm, which was also quite sweaty. Orlando tugged his arm out of Dom's grasp, but shifted it obligingly off his chest when Dom leaned in a little more, squinting. His grin widened, erasing some of the pain-lines from his forehead.

"He wore stripes with his plaid, strutted round like a cad, and shot off with the birds prematurely."

"Bollocks!" Orlando sputtered, and Dom fell back, laughing almost soundlessly and clutching at his head at the same time. Orlando looked down, and sure enough, there was a libelous limerick scrawled right across his bloody chest. In Dom's handwriting. "You cunt!" Orlando accused, but his lips twitched slightly.

"Oh my God, my head," Dom moaned, but that didn't seem to stop him from snickering (even if they were sort of groan-like snickers), and Orlando was starting to feel a lot less guilty about wishing Dom a crappy hangover.

Dom rubbed gingerly at his face, and Orlando noted that he wasn't the only one who'd ended up under Dom's pen during the great missing expanses of the previous night. _Alias: The Great Eye_ , said the back of one of Dom's hands. _Big John's_ , said the other, and there was a mysterious number above it, which was also (Orlando noted, after counting quickly) not long enough to be a phone number. Heh. At least whatever number was scrawled on Orlando's arm didn't have "Big John's" appended to it.

Also, there was a tic tac toe game right above Dom's belly button. O's had won, in spite of the X's traditional tactical advantage of securing the middle space. Orlando felt a bit smug about that. He was always O's.

Actually, now that Orlando really looked, there was stuff written all over Dom. He could see something in quotes across Dom's chest, some cartoon people engaged in dubious activity along the visible ridges of Dom's ribs on the left side, and what almost certainly _was_ a phone number (it had the proper number of digits) spanning the length of Dom's right collarbone, along with the name _Jinni_ in curly-girly handwriting. The i's were dotted with little hearts. In spite of the off-tempo Macarena (complete with line dancing monkey's wearing clogs -- probably winged ones, like the scary ones from The Wizard of Oz) blaring along his cerebral cortex, Orlando grinned. When Dom's hands fell away from his face, Orlando saw that the phrase on Dom's chest was: "He's not the Messiah! He's a Very Naughty Boy!"

Too right, he was.

"Did we rent Monty Python last night?" Orlando asked innocently, and Dom cracked one eye open to gaze uncomprehendingly at him. Orlando pointed at Dom's chest.

Dom looked down, his lips moving as he read upside down, and Orlando couldn't keep back the chuckles, although truthfully they were more like wuffles, very soft and breathy, the gentlest sort of laughter he could manage in deference to the fault-lines his skull was doubtless riddled with.

"At least it isn't bad poetry impugning my manhood," Dom grumbled, and licked the side of one silver-ringed thumb to rub fretfully at his chest. "And I seem to have gotten a complete phone number. Bugger. It's not coming off."

Orlando craned his neck painfully forward to look at the defamatory limerick-cum-graffiti on his own chest, but didn't bother with trying to wipe it off. He just couldn't put forth the necessary effort. He'd attack it in the shower properly, with soap and water. Or industrial sand paper, if it came to that. "But I won the tic tac toe game. And there are naked people cavorting on your ribs," Orlando pointed out helpfully.

"You shut it, premature ejaculation lad!"

"Don't make me call your boyfriend, Big John," Orlando threatened, grinning even though grinning sort of hurt. "Man, I'm going to go brush my teeth. My mouth tastes like arse."

"It's not mine," Dom smirked, and Orlando flipped two fingers at him as he coerced himself upright.

v. quarter past four, Saturday

Orlando felt almost human again once he'd brushed his teeth and splashed cool water on his face.

The whole naked-in-bed-with-a-mate (who may or may not have also been naked) thing had assumed something like perspective in his mind. They'd been pissed, after all, and it wasn't like it was the first time Orlando had passed out with a hobbit. Granted, more clothing had been involved on all the previous occasions, but if you took the heat into consideration -- he made a mental note to check the thermostat on his way to the kitchen to treat his pulsing skull with some hair of the dog -- and the fact that they'd apparently gone to town with one of the black markers Dom habitually kept jammed into his back pocket, then it sort of made sense.

"In a very twisted, very _Dom_ sort of way," he growled at his reflection, dimly visible in the mirror. The bathroom was mostly dark, as it had taken less than a second for Orlando to realize the mistake of turning on the overhead fluorescent light. His retinas were still burning, thanks. He'd managed to find the nightlight plugged into the outlet above the basin on the third try (and after only whamming his elbow into the hand-towel rack once, though it was still smarting, stupid fucking funny bone), and the result was a sort of warm, yellowish half-light that didn't make him feel too much like someone had plunged knitting needles into both eyes.

It was light enough to aim toward the darkness in the middle of the pale, ghostly shape of the toilet, and that was all that really mattered. He felt even more human once he'd had a piss, and was just thinking it might be possible to face the remainder of the day with some modicum of self-respect when he noticed that there was more writing on his belly. Well, hips, actually. What did one actually call that expanse of skin that lay between the navel and the crotch anyway? Did that have a name?

He shuffled over to the mirror with his track pants around his thighs to investigate.

Orlando's name was on his right hip, underlined, with seven tic marks beneath it. Well. Orli, actually. The O at the beginning of Orli lay directly over his right hipbone, and the tic marks were in two rows, the lowest of which nearly reached the top of his right thigh.

Dom's name was on Orlando's left hip (Dom had used the sun tattooed there as the O in his name, and for reasons that were beyond Orlando's ability to comprehend in his present state, this seemed oddly important), underlined, with five tic marks beneath it, the fifth crossed over the first four in a neat diagonal line.

There was no question that it was Dom's handwriting. Dom wrote on himself often enough for Orlando to be quite familiar with it.

What on earth had they been keeping track of?

What one earth had they felt the need to keep track of _there_?

He couldn't help thinking about it for a few long moments (during which the possibilities flitting across his mind had his face burning and his palms sweating). His dick, which had been more-or-less soft and innocent of any apparent wrongdoing, twitched against his thigh.

Orlando jerked his track pants up, covering the inexplicable scorecard, and decided that he should probably put some more cool water on his face.

Or maybe he should wash that off of his… uh… whatever the fuck that spot was called.

After all, some questions were probably best left unanswered. Or unasked even, which was good, as Orlando had no intention of asking. At all.

He should definitely wash it off.

  
vi. half past four, Saturday

  
Dom was standing at the foot of his bed in a pair of boxers, nudging at a pile of clothes with one foot. "Can't find my clothes," he informed Orlando. His forehead was all wrinkled up again. Orlando handed him a beer and two aspirin from the kitchen. The fact that Dom was wearing boxers meant nothing. He could've put them on while Orlando was in the kitchen, or taking a piss, or looking in the mirror (trying not to imagine what sort of specific events could have lead to him having some sort of tally on a portion of his anatomy that would've been awfully difficult for Dom to have written on had Orlando been wearing anything).

The point was, it could still be Dom's thong.

"There's a bed sheet tent in the living room," Orlando told him. Although pavilion was probably a better word for it.

He could think of absolutely no rational explanation for them to have created such a thing. And it was no child's hidey-hole, either. It covered the entire expanse of available space in the living room. Corners of sheets were tucked everywhere (wedged between the video player and the Play Station, closed in the door of the coat closet, wound around the little lever on the recliner that caused the foot portion to spring out of the bottom), and Orlando didn't have to get down and crawl (he shuddered at the very idea of attempting it) inside to see that there were several little rooms inside, neatly sectioned off.

Orlando remembered doing that as a kid quite clearly. A couple of chairs and a sheet or a blanket, and you had a little clubhouse from which you could plan attacks on the enemy encampment, trade secrets with your mates, or work on your plans to take over the world. Bed sheet fortresses made for ideal hideouts on inclement days.

But he didn't recall the night before having been particularly inclement.

Dom just looked at him like he wasn't sure what the correct response to that information was. Orlando, not really knowing what he'd expected, looked away. Dom twisted the top off the beer and used it to wash down the aspirin. "Are these Billy's jeans?" he asked, toeing at a knotted twist of denim that might or might not have been a pair of trousers.

Orlando squinted at them. "Yeah." He frowned. "Why would we have Billy's jeans?"

Dom didn't bother answering. Orlando wasn't offended; the question had been more or less rhetorical anyhow. He did look around, like he was expecting Billy to appear.

Fuck, it was possible. Wouldn't have been any weirder than most of the other crap that had happened so far.

There was an awkward silence.

"So, um…" Dom began, and Orlando was almost grateful when he was interrupted by another rousing rendition of banjo-fied Stray Cat Strut. He glared at Dom, who spread his hands helplessly. "What? It's not mine! Since Lij jacked with it Sunday before last, all mine will play is the bloody Jeopardy theme song."

"Well, it's not mine. Billy's faffed with mine until I can't set the ring at all; he's usurped the little code thingy and locked me out. It's been squawking like a chicken for ages!"

Although, really, it could be either of theirs, since Billy and Lij had both been present at some point the night before, and they were both well-known for fucking with other people's mobiles. Elijah'd once reprogrammed Orlando's entire phonebook. It had taken him ages to undo it, although he was pretty sure he still had Liv listed under "Boobalicious" and Sean Astin as "Mikey."

"Bugger," Dom said, and staggered in the general direction from which the devil-music was emanating. The source seemed to be another mound of clothing, and just watching Dom rummage through it for the phone made Orlando break out in sympathy sweat. "What the fuck is with the bloody heat?" (Oops, Orlando had forgotten to check on that) Dom snarled, and then produced a phone (his own) triumphantly, right as it stopped warbling.

Thank God.

Dom peered wrathfully at the little screen.

"Who was it?" Orlando asked, watching Dom push ridiculously tiny buttons and squint.

"Oscar Winner Elijah Wood," Dom reported, and snorted. Orlando would have snorted, too, except the flying monkeys in his head forbade it. "He's left a voice mail."

Dom dialed and listened, then pushed more buttons. Orlando watched with interest as Dom's face went through a range of truly intriguing expressions. "Well?" Orlando demanded once Dom had turned the mobile off. Dom gave him a long look.

"He wants to know where his car seats are. Also our friend Big John rang him and told him that'd we'd given him his number."

Orlando felt his eyebrows creeping up toward his hairline, and sank down onto the edge of the bed, wrapping both hands around the cool glass of his beer bottle. "Big John from your hand?"

Dom frowned, and raised his hands, studying them intently for several seconds. "Um," he said finally. "I've no idea. But I assume so. How many Big John's do you suppose we know?"

"I don't know about you," Orlando announced, "but I don't know _any_ Big John's." They just looked at one another for long moments. "So, what did Big John want?"

"Er… it was kind of hard to make out. He was sort of growling in the voicemail." Orlando's brows crept a bit further upward. Elijah? Growling? "I gather Big John was wanting Elijah to come by and get measured for his gown for the show next weekend." Orlando's eyebrows completed their upward journey rapidly, and he was pretty sure they were now lost somewhere around the top of his head. "He also said Billy had been looking for us, and Billy was 'irate as a motherfucker.'"

Orlando frowned, and tried to force the winged monkeys to do something useful, like call up any pertinent information from the previous night that had to do with Big John, Billy, or the green thong still lying on his carpet.

Dom was staring at the back of his hands again, a look of profound concentration on his face. At least, Orlando guessed that was what it was supposed to be; it could pass for an attack of gastrointestinal discomfort just as easily. "Orli," Dom said, and put both hands on his hips (one still curled around his mobile), and then moved them straight forward. He started thoughtfully at the space between his hands for several seconds, then looked at Orlando again. "Would you say my hips were about eighty-three centimeters?"

Orlando said nothing. He had no idea what he could possibly say in response to a question like that (although he'd got the notion from an ex-girlfriend that the appropriate response was something along the lines of _"Oh, no way, they can't be anywhere near that big!"_ ). That question had no place in a conversation between himself and another bloke. Even one as odd as Dom. Ever.

He took a long drink of his beer and wondered how many more of them it would take before the world started to make sense again.

"What about my waist?" Dom asked. He didn't seem particularly bothered by Orlando's deliberate lack of response to the previous question. "Around seventy-five, you think?"

Orlando drank more beer. Surely it was possible that ignoring the entire topic would make it go away.

"You aren't helpful, you know," Dom said.

Dom had clearly lost his bloody mind. Orlando's mum had always told him never to speak with lunatics. It might be contagious.

Dom sighed and glowered for a moment, and then held out the hand with "Big John's" on it. He tapped the back of his hand meaningfully.

"Fuck off!" Orlando objected, but he was already raising his arm to read the numbers on it. He could see Dom smirking out of the corner of his eye. He had to admit, they looked about right. Wait, what the fuck was he thinking? "No," he said. "No way. We never."

Dom shrugged. "I don't make the news, I just report it."

Orlando resisted the urge to point out that if Dom's theory was correct, he had bloody well helped make the fucking news, thank you very much.

"Did Elijah say if we left with anyone?" Orlando asked, and pretended not to notice how hopeful-but-not-really-convinced his own voice sounded. He couldn't help stealing a glance at the mystery thong. "Unless that's yours."

"Not mine!" Dom denied immediately, and hooked a thumb into the elastic band of his boxers. "My pants are present and accounted for."

Which was true, except… Wait just a fucking minute! "Aren't those mine?"

Dom's expression almost made the whole thing worth it.

  
vii. quarter of five, Saturday

"What do we _know_?" Dom asked, chewing thoughtfully on the cap of a black marker. It was one of Dom's -- Orlando privately thought they'd be lucky to find a single working ink pen anywhere in his house, so it was a good thing Dom had the whole magic marker fetish -- but they'd found it in Billy's knotted up jeans. On closer investigation, they'd agreed; they were definitely Billy's jeans.

Dom was on his belly on Orlando's bed, rubbing at one temple, the rumpled pages of last weeks re-writes turned face down in front of him, so he could write on the back.

"We started out at a club with Billy and Elijah," Orlando volunteered. "I don't remember the bloody name of it. Bad 80's music. Should we call Elijah and ask?"

"Maybe we should wait to do that until we know where his car seats are," Dom suggested, scribbling.

Orlando thought that was probably a very good idea. "We were with Billy and Elijah at least long enough for Elijah to reprogram your phone. So at least a couple of hours, right? He'd have waited until you were pissed enough not to notice when he nicked it."

"Yeah, okay," Dom agreed. "After that?"

Orlando sighed. "I only remember dancing with Madonna and camping, mate." Dom arched a dubious eyebrow at him. "Fuck off! What do you remember?"

Dom frowned and chewed his pen cap. "I remember playing air guitar… somewhere. And a very tall woman." They exchanged a look, and Dom added: "Er… I think." He scratched thoughtfully at the stubble on one cheek. "Can't remember if Billy and Lij were with us. And I remember… Did we go to Viggo's?"

  
viii. five to five, Saturday

  
An investigation of the voicemails left on Dom's mobile had turned up two voicemails from Elijah, both saying basically the same thing ("Who the fuck is Big John anyway? What did you fuckers _do_ last night?"), and one from Billy. Neither of them could really make out what Billy had been saying, but Orlando was willing to bet it hadn't been anything as innocent as morning greetings or inquiries as to how they were feeling after their night of unsavory adventure. Nothing from Viggo. Orlando was hoping against hope this meant they hadn't gone anywhere near Viggo's.

Orlando's mobile turned out to be in the pavilion in the living room. He remembered to check the thermostat on his way down the hall this time, and found it twisted all the way to its highest setting. Dom just shrugged and rubbed at his eyes.

Dom volunteered to crawl inside the pavilion -- the flying monkeys in Orlando's skull had protested vehemently at the idea of crawling around on the floor -- and found not only Orlando's mobile, but Elijah's car seats. Apparently they were the central support (along with an end table, a floor lamp, and a mop propped up in the corner and wedged in place with a case of beer, it looked like) for the pavilion.

"How did we even get them _out_ of his car?" Dom murmured wonderingly, once he'd crawled back out. Orlando just shook his head. "Erm… Orli?"

Orlando considered not answering (he remembered what had happened last time). He considered locking himself in the loo. He considered changing his name to Mughati and moving to Tibet. Then he said: "Yeah?"

"Is something written on your hip there?"

  
ix. five o'clock, Saturday

  
"It could be a clue!" Dom objected, following Orlando into the bedroom. "Let me see."

"It's not a clue!" Orlando protested, and fumbled at his mobile with slick palms. "It says I've got a voicemail," he said, waving the mobile in Dom's direction. Distraction was the way to go, he figured. Distraction along with ignoring the weirdly liquidy heat blossoming just behind the writing that he had stupidly, stupidly, _stupidly_ **not** washed off.

Dom refused to be distracted. "How do you know it's not a clue?" He narrowed his eyes and advanced on Orlando.

"I know!" Of course, he didn't know any such thing. The only thing he did know, in fact, was that Dom's handwriting on the smooth expanse of skin below his navel made him feel flustered and uncertain, which was bad all by itself, and could only be made worse by Dom _looking_ at it. "Bugger off!"

Dom hesitated, brows drawn together, obviously puzzled. "You suddenly fucking shy, elf boy?" There was the hint of a smile hovering at one corner of Dom's mouth, like Dom wanted to smile, but wasn't certain if he should.

Er. "No." Of course he wasn't. That would be stupid. Dom had seen him starkers , so it would be ridiculous to be shy now. So. Um.

"Then let me see," Dom said, and before Orlando could think of a suitable response, Dom's hands were tugging insistently at the elastic waist of his track pants.

"Hey!" Orlando objected, shoving Dom's hands away and stepping back. Dom blinked, his expression clearly indicating that he thought Orlando had gone mad. "Um," Orlando added, because suddenly things were quite weird, and he wasn't sure what sort of reaction he was supposed to have in a situation like this. This situation was exactly like the bits of skin covered in Dom's handwriting, representative of the score in a contest Orlando didn't remember the rules to; it defied anything as specific as classification.

"Orli? Mate, have you gone off your fucking nut?"

Genuine concern laced Dom's voice, in spite of the vulgarity. "No. I… oh, for fuck's sake." He sighed. "Fine." He eased the track pants down his hips just enough to reveal the writing.

Dom's eyebrows went upward, but slowly, by degrees. His eyes flickered up to Orlando's face for a moment, very wide, and then back down. "What the fuck were we keeping track of?"

Orlando just shook his head.

Dom blinked thoughtfully, and absently wiped a bead of sweat away from his upper lip with a thumb.

And Dom had done it on purpose, Orlando was absolutely sure of it, and it was like his hands were asleep again (he'd remember that for when he needed to try and justify things to himself later). His thumbs hooked themselves more firmly into the waist of the track pants, and his wrists went all bendy and unsupportive. It certainly wasn't like he'd actually tugged them down further so _more_ skin (not to mention the top of the dark tangle of curls due south of his belly button) showed, it was just the weight of his hands pulling on the fabric. Which was really quite flimsy, after all.

Dom's eyes came back up to his face (and Orlando decided that he was glad most moments in life, even the important ones, didn't have the slow-motion feel of important moments in films, because living a moment stretched into at least half an hour was nerve wracking and odd, and gave a person entirely too much time to mentally kick his own arse), and the potential curl of Dom's lips from five minutes ago (or thirty-five, depending on how you looked at it) was now a fully realized little smile.

"Um," Orlando said. Fuck, why was it still so bloody hot in here? "What?"

Dom blinked again. "I didn't say anything. But since you asked, do you think we shagged?"

It was just fucking like Dom to just blurt something out like that, no bloody finesse at all.

"How the fuck would I know?" Orlando demanded huffily, possibly even a little stridently. The winged monkeys seemed to have migrated south to the general vicinity of his stomach, at least considering the way it was abruptly full of disquieting flutters.

Dom looked at him, and then, quite confidently, said: "You'd know."

"Why would I know?" Orlando demanded, glaring. "You're the one who asked, so clearly _you_ don't know, so why the hell would you think _I'd_ know."

"Because I'd have been on top, which means you'd have been on bottom, and if you had been, you'd know!"

And Orlando couldn't think of a suitable response to that, and spent several seconds gaping at Dom instead. Eventually, he managed: "Why would _I_ have to have been the one on the bottom?"

Dom gave him a withering look that Orlando was prepared to take serious offense to, but then disarmed him neatly with a perfectly logical explanation. "Because if I'd been on the bottom, I'd still be feeling it."

Oh.

Er…

Wait…

Dom smirked. "Are you feeling it?"

Um… "Um. No."

"Okay. So we didn't shag."

"Right."

So, that was settled then. Whatever the meaning behind the mysterious tic marks, they certainly had nothing to do with shagging. Because that wouldn't even make sense, would it? No. Of course not. Yes, they were both young and reasonably healthy, but even young, reasonably healthy blokes couldn't fuck… um… well, twelve times.

So. Nothing to do with fucking. Which was good. No fucking. And he absolutely wasn't going to think about what "still feeling it" might mean. Huh uh. No way. Wasn't even curious about what Dom meant and how Dom even knew (but Dom did know, he had to, or why would he even say that?) what it would be like to "still be feeling it."

"Of course, that doesn't mean we didn't do _anything_ ," Dom said cheerfully.

"What?" _Mustn't panic! Really, bad time to panic!_

"Nah, now I'm just winding you up, mate," Dom grinned, and Orlando actually considered exerting the necessary effort to strangle Dom, a true measure of his exasperation. "You just looked so panicked at the whole idea…"

"Can we please focus!" Orlando snapped, and then groaned as the flying monkeys relocated back to his head, reminding him of why shouting was a bad idea just at present. "I'm dying here, we have no idea what we did last night, someone named Big John is calling Elijah, and Billy is pissed off at us for God knows what!"

"And we made a tent with Elijah's car seats," Dom added helpfully.

"And there is a thong!"

"And someone named Jinni wrote her phone number on my chest."

"And a thong!" Orlando pointed out, and then realized he was repeating himself.

"You're really worried about that thong," Dom noted, grinning, and Dom was really fucking insufferable, _why_ had Orlando never noticed this before?

"Maybe you should be more worried about it! Doesn't any of this bother you at all? Big John, bits of Elijah's car, Billy's clothes! You're wearing my boxers for fuck's sake!" He rubbed at his mohawk and sighed. "You aren't the least bit curious about what the fuck happened last night?"

Dom gave him a long look. The kind of look that sort of made Orlando's skin itch all over, and he had to actively resist the urge to scratch. "I'm curious, sure," he said. "But I'm not really worried about it. It couldn't have been _that_ bad."

What the fuck? Were they occupying the same fucking plane of existence here? "Are you on drugs?"

"Just settle down, Orli," Dom said, and he still sounded disturbingly _not_ -disturbed. "I'm not denying that we got a bit out of hand last, I'm just saying it really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. The way I look at it, we made a new friend --" Orlando snorted, "-- expressed ourselves artistically with nothing but bed sheets and a magic marker, embarrassed Elijah, which is always a bonus, and somehow managed to steal Billy's clothes. All in all, I'd have to say the night was a success." Orlando opened his mouth to retort scathingly, and Dom added: "And no one got hurt."

He'd gotten close enough to run a soothing hand up Orlando's arm at some point, and Orlando was fairly sure that he'd had something biting lined up in response, but he couldn't remember it. When he opened his mouth, what came out instead was: "You've got a cut on your bottom lip."

Dom's tongue poked out and swiped at his bottom lip, exploratory. "True. And you left a hickey on my thigh, so I've been injured twice."

"Hickey's aren't injuries," Orlando scoffed. Er. Wait. "You can't prove it was me!" Crap, that wasn't what he'd meant to say at all!

"You can't prove it _wasn't_ ," Dom said, sounding perfectly reasonable for a bloke that was off his nut, and it might be a good idea to stop letting Dom pet his arm like that, because it was really very distracting, in fact, it was so distracting that Orlando was far to distracted to move away, even though he could plainly see that Dom was getting closer, was completely and utterly too close, in fact, but as distracted as he was no one would expect him to…

x. quarter of six, Saturday

Kissing Dom was distracting, too.

But they had to breathe sometime, and Orlando wasn't a total idiot, and it did eventually occur to him to ask: "How did you know you had a hickey on your thigh?"

Dom blinked indolently and stroked the curve of Orlando's spine with the side of his thumb -- Orlando could feel the cool metal of the ring on his skin. "I saw it when I was putting your boxers on."

Dom was a tricky fucking Manc.

"That is so totally your thong," Orlando declared unequivocally.

"Actually," Dom said, "I was thinking about that."

"You were, were you?"

"Yeah. And you know what I noticed?" Dom's lips curled into a cheeky grin that Orlando couldn't seem to help returning, in spite of the fact that he was fairly sure Dom was simply trying to avert suspicion of thong ownership away from himself. Dom's eyes crinkled up at the corners when he grinned though, and Orlando suspected he was a bit of a sucker for crinkles.

So maybe he'd just let Dom get away with it.

"What?"

"We've got Billy's jeans and his t-shirt, and even his socks." Dom's grin widened. "But I didn't see Billy's pants."


End file.
